Bakersfield High leads the state for all-time wins and also has had 19 undefeated seasons. Jermaine Ervin (left) was a member of Driller squad that was unbeaten in 2011. At right is Mater Dei of Santa Ana head coach Bruce Rollinson, who played on an undefeated team for the Monarchs in 1965 and coached several of them, including the most recent in 2021 (spring) & 2021 (fall). Photos: CentralValleyFootball.com & @CIFSS / Twitter.com.
All teams that finished 3-0 for the once-in-a-lifetime-we-hope spring 2021 season were added to this all-time state/regional list, but there were none for 2022 or 2023. This honor roll list according to Cal-Hi Sports is of every reported unbeaten football team to ever play among schools currently in the CIF Central Section, CIF L.A. City Section, CIF Southern Section and CIF San Diego Section.
For companion post of All-Time NorCal Unbeaten Football Teams (Gold Club), CLICK HERE.
This is a post for Gold Club members only on CalHiSports.com. Football state record updates through the 2023 season are done and we are already working on updating everything & adding new categories. Weekly state rankings and some of our all-state teams also are for Gold Club members only. You can sign up today to get all of our Gold Club content for just $3.99 for one month. For details, CLICK HERE.
Any historical feature like this for California high school football would not be possible without the work of late, legendary San Pedro and Rio Vista-based sports researcher Bruce McIntosh. Bruce, who died in December of 2017 at age 87, traded information for more than 40 years with Cal-Hi Sports founder Nelson Tennis (1936-2004). While Nelson specialized mostly in state records, Bruce did a lot his work for all-time school-by-school records, especially in football. His index card collection of football scores and affiliated binders that summarized a lot of that information is now part of the Cal-Hi Sports historical archives.
We were able to get Bruce McIntosh out to a game in 2012 in Vacaville. Photo: Mark Tennis.
After compiling this list to include every unbeaten football team in state history, we decided to break it up into separate Northern California and Southern California posts. Usually, we include the CIF Central Section as part of the north, but there are a higher number of unbeaten teams from the north than the south. Many of the NorCal teams just didn’t have section playoffs for many years while the CIF Southern Section and L.A. City Section have had playoffs for many, many more years. That simply means that a lot of top CIFSS and L.A. City teams that were unbeaten for the regular season suffered playoff losses. For these lists, the CIF Central Section has been included in the south. For closed schools, we tried to keep those in the sections they were in, but may have missed some of them. For schools that have switched sections, we have put those into the sections in which they are current members. All schools are listed alphabetically, so a school with an unbeaten team that you don’t see may have been listed for another section.
